Tips For Mac

Everyone wants perfect photos, with the advent of high quality cameras in point and shoot cameras and even iPhones, it isn’t hard to take a good photo. However, with a small amount of image editing most people can take those photos and make them look excellent. Although built in apps such as iPhoto have image editing tools, some people may not have iPhoto installed (or don’t like to use it) but still want to edit images without having to pay out thousands for a tool such as Photoshop or the cheaper version Elements. That’s why an app called Snapheal, was invented. Its a cheap photo retouch that can edit images and make them look fantastic.

Retouching Photos

The app interface showing the tools on the right and a sunny Greek beach as the photo to edit.

This app is all about tweaking and re-touching images to remove blemishes and imperfections from images you have taken. This is really useful if you have an image that you want to frame or use, but it isn’t quite perfect. Snapheal has plenty of tools and features to get that image looking perfect. In this example I am going to use a photo I have taken from a recent holiday, for those interested it is the beach in Kefalonia used in the filming of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and popular book and film.

The tools that you have access to in the app are located on the right hand side. There is erase, clone & stamp, retouch, adjust crop and rotate. The first step is to erase the parts of the image you don’t want. I am going to use this tool to remove the people and umbrellas from the beach. You simply select the parts you don’t want, select the erase mode which varies depending on the image an complexity and then you hit erase. After a small amount of processing those imperfections disappear. The resulting changes are very good, better than what I could do.

Image editing can take a while to process. Although you are given a fact to amuse, while you what.

The changes do take a while to take effect, especially if the image is large, however the progress bar and amazing fact do keep you entertained.

The other tools in the app are very useful, the clone and stamp tool is great if you want to remove or add something that that erase tool can’t quite do.

The retouch tool is designed for altering specific areas. It works like a brush, so you paint over the areas you want to change. For example, if you have a person that is in a shadow because you have taken a picture into the sun, the lighten retouch tool can bring them to life. It allows you to alter the image in specific areas.

Finally the other tools such as the crop and adjust, which can alter the contrast and other features of the image as a whole, can bring the image to something that most people would be proud of.

The Outcome

The final image, something to be proud of.

The final image, which has the cars, people as well as the umbrellas remove looks a lot better than the original. I have also altered the colours using the adjust tools to make the image brighter and the colours greater.

If you spend a while learning the tools and features of this app, you can make some really good images. It took me about half an hour to get to this stage. I reckon after an hour or two with a couple of different images you can get pretty good with the tools. If you get stuck at any point the video help located in the top right will load a youtube video showing you how to use the tool.

Conclusion

Overall, I quite like this app. It has a good Mac interface and the tools it has a really good. The erase tool is particularly good at removing blemishes and errors within an image. I am sure if you spend a weekend playing with this app you can make an album of good looking images.

There are a couple of problems with this app, it sucks up memory and can slow you computer down when it is rendering changes (such as using the erase tool). This may be due to the image I was editing but it did detract from using the app. I am sure updates to this app will keep speed it up.

The app costs $14.99 which is a great price for what you get. There are more expensive apps out there, that probably do more, but for this price you can’t go wrong. You can get it on the App Store to download right onto your Mac, you can find a trial here.

If you have any questions or comments about this app, please leave a comment.

If you want to keep up with the latests post from Mac Tricks And Tips I recommend you subscribe to the RSS Feed.

About

I'm James, and I have been a Mac user for years. Over this time I have found loads of tips and tricks which have helped me get the most out of my Mac, so I decided to share them with you all. For more info see my about page.

Suggestions

Do you have a tip you want to share, or do you have a suggestion you want to make for a future tip or trick. Then please head over to the contact page and make your comment known.

Contact

Fancy a chat, you can contact me easily. I will respond to any question you ask. Interested in an advertising partnership, have a cool product you want to promote, then please leave a message.